Feature request: Password generation UI

oldnparanoid

I'm a happy 1Password user, and I have convinced others to use it. But even great s/w can stand incremental improvement. I have a few suggestions for enhancing 1Password, mostly concerning the password generator user interface. Searching the forum here, I see that I'm not the first to make some of these suggestions, but I'll add my thoughts, some of which may add something to the discussion. And as suggested in some of the Agilebits responses, add my vote for giving this some development attention.

1) I would find it very useful to have 1Password tell me the recipe properties of an existing password. The use case is changing the password for an existing login. Sites often have constraints on the length, digits, use of symbols etc., and sometimes it takes some trial and error or calls to customer service to discover them. Stupid, to be sure, but the way it is.

With the current program, I end up squinting at this long string of random characters, counting length, then checking for digits and symbols. Or having to add notes to the login item to record the recipe.

This is something the software should be doing for me. There ought to be an additional choice in the context menu for password, besides 'copy' and 'reveal', that is 'show recipe'. For a password that was generated by 1Password, that ought to be the recipe it used, saved in the data structure. For anything manually entered/edited, or generated by 1P before this feature gets added, then figure it out on the fly. And tell me explicitly which of these it is.

E.g., length = 32/ digits = 4/ symbols = 4. Boolean option state ...

2) Sites sometimes have restrictions to a subset of symbols. It may be nonsensical but it's what we users have to deal with, and the software should help. Others have agreed. The password recipe dropdown ought to have another checkbox for 'constrain symbols'. Checking it un-grays a data field where the user can enter the allowed symbols.

Moreover, this needs to be integrated with suggestion (1), in that the list of constrained symbols should be retained in the data structure, and be included in the 'show recipe' display.

I recognize that (1) and (2) increase the size of the data structure that needs to be retained for every login, but considering whet else is stored, that seems minor. I've also noted responses that this needs to be encrypted or it can aid cracking the password. OK, deal with it. If this is perceived as impacting performance for password use unacceptably, then design it so it's encrypted separately and only needs to be decrypted/encrypted in edit (or requested display) mode.

3) The recipe for the password of an existing login ought to default to the recipe that was previously used for that login, if that is available. Otherwise it ought to default to the best you can compute from the existing password, i.e., length and number of digits and symbols. And again, make explicit which of these it is. The second case can be implemented before the data structure is enhanced, and will help in many cases, so get to it.

4) I would like a preference item to have the password recipe displayed by default when I am using the password generator, either in the main app or the mini. Saves a mouse click I'm almost always be going to make, and doesn't get in the way otherwise.

5) I'd like another context menu choice on the password, for "reveal large type", as you have recently added to iP for iOS. Related, a toggle button (always initialized off) in the password edit popup to display the password edit field in large(r) type. My ability to read 32-character random character strings is not as good as my ability to read words on the screen, even at the same font size. This would mitigate the issue of having to edit a generated password to constrain symbols until (2) is implemented, but will be helpful beyond that.

Thanks for listening.

Megan

Hi @oldnparanoid ,

Thanks so much for taking the time to provide such detailed feedback! It's always great to hear from users who love 1Password so much that they want to help us make it even better. :)

1) I would find it very useful to have 1Password tell me the recipe properties of an existing password. The use case is changing the password for an existing login.

I agree, this would be awesome. Of course, ideally, sites would do away with password restrictions and recipes so that we can use long and completely random passwords on each and every site, but until we complete our plan to take over the world ;) this could be a very useful feature for users. Consider your vote added.

ref: OPM-1530

2) Sites sometimes have restrictions to a subset of symbols.

Again, it would be so much better if random passwords were accepted everywhere, but you're right, we have heard a request or two for some more specific recipes within our password generator, and more specifically, with respect to character sets. You've mentioned a few difficulties with this, and you're right, none of them are insurmountable. Another challenge is that the set of characters that is allowed by this site might not be the same as the next site. It's not quite a simple matter of having one limited character set.

ref: OPM-1378

3) The recipe for the password of an existing login ought to default to the recipe that was previously used for that login, if that is available.

I think this falls quite nicely under #1. If we're saving the recipes for passwords for individual sites, it would only make sense to default to that when a user goes to update their password.

4) I would like a preference item to have the password recipe displayed by default when I am using the password generator, either in the main app or the mini.

Thanks for the suggestion!

5) I'd like another context menu choice on the password, for "reveal large type", as you have recently added to iP for iOS.

I am quite enjoying the large type option on iOS, and I'd be happy to add a vote for you to that feature request for Mac.

ref: OPM-1149

Again, thanks for sharing your thoughts here!